Powering Accounts Payable Processing with Docstar ECM

Providing Quintessential Essential Services

The Morristown Utilities Commission (MUC) is a broad-based utility service company, MUC provides power, water, wastewater, and broadband services to approximately 25,500 customers in the city of Morristown, Tennessee, and surrounding utility districts that spread into Hamblen, Grainger, and Jefferson Counties.

MUC was looking to streamline its Accounts Payable processes and partnered with Docstar ECM partner Mosaic Corporation in early 2019. The firm specializes in helping organizations transition from paper-based, manual workflow processes to more efficient automated paperless workflows that drive efficiency, lower costs, and scale infinitely. Since then, Mosaic Corporation has worked with MUC to re-envision its AP processes with Docstar ECM AP Automation.

The software enables organizations to capture, route, approve, and integrate their AP operations, and work smarter with real-time access to invoices—from anywhere on any device— realizing significant productivity and cycle time improvements.

Modernizing Accounts Payable Operations

The move to Docstar ECM AP Automation has modernized MUC’s AP operations, which had been heavily paper-based and manual in nature. Previously, PO and non-PO invoices were shuffled among the organization’s 150 employees and 7 different worksites for approval via interoffice mail. Many of these invoices involved manually orchestrating a 3-way match process, where the receiving ticket was matched up with documentation from three separate stacks of paper.

Once the paper chase and the dust had settled, the information was then manually keyed into MUC’s Microsoft Dynamics GP system. As a final step, the hard copy paperwork was laid to rest in the appropriate file cabinet.

Today, the complete AP process at MUC has been digitized. With nonPO invoices, vendors email invoices to an AP email address; Docstar ECM Intelligent Document Capture automates the capture of invoice content, eliminating this labor-intensive and time-consuming process. An email is then automatically sent to the individual(s) responsible for approval. Once the invoice is approved, the AP group pushes the approval into Dynamics GP for payment.

With a PO invoice, the process is similar, however, Docstar ECM AP Automation also completes the three-way match process based on the record of what has been received in Dynamics. Invoices are safely and securely electronically stored, indexed and available for easy reference after the fact.